I didn’t even need to read Elizabeth Drew’s article at The New Republic, “Who Knew Trump Would Be a Weak President?”, to answer it. Anybody who’d been observing the presidency with an informed eye for any period of time knew.
In my opinion we’ve had at most four strong presidents in the post-war period, the strongest by far having been Johnson. Others I think were definitely strong presidents were Nixon and Reagan. Others can be argued.
I think it’s difficult to argue that we haven’t had three consecutive weak presidents, culminating in Donald Trump.
Can Trump recover? Can he become a strong president? Beats me. He claims to be a quick study but so far I haven’t seen it. I do not believe that any president can be a strong president without the ability to bend the Congress to his or her will and in the legal phrase, res ipsa loquitur.
A question for the interested student: are strong presidents good presidents?
I don’t know how you define “strong” but by any measure I can imagine Trump has been weak, as were the last three. (Clinton blew the way the wind was blowing). However, out of consistency you might note that for years you opined that it was too early when it came to Obama. That said, I don’t see Trump bending Congress to his will. He is much more likely to reframe public perceptions of the limits and folly of government.
The last query is far too subjective to be addressed in a short answer. Johnson had power, but his agenda gave us the expansion of Viet Nam, exposed to public perception that government is totally dishonest and is now bankrupting us. Others might be more charitable.
IMO other than Roosevelt Johnson was the strongest president of the 20th century. He had a clear idea of what he wanted to accomplish and had the acumen to get it through Congress in a form and manner that would endure after he had left office.
IMO a strong presidency isn’t desirable but a more modest executive branch requires a functional Congress, which we’ve also been lacking for decades.
Being “strong” is in the eyes of the beholder. Consequently, I really don’t see how one can definitively measure “presidential strength” by some mutually agreed upon metric. For instance, physical strength can be quantified by let’s say how many push-ups you can manage, miles you can run or swim, or pounds one can lift. But the strength of a presidency??? Is is how many bills are successfully passed or the strength of his/her approval rating? Especially in a polarized environment, strength is more often than not rated high or low depending on if that president has the same party affiliation or not with the person doing the assessment.
Until the 20th Century, we generally had weak Presidents. Strong Presidents coincide with the rise of Imperial America, and they are conspicuous for having near absolute freedom of action in foreign affairs and, most especially, war-making. Executive Orders have also largely replaced Congressional action. It has been argued that the Founders expected Congress to be dominant, but nowadays Congress is very weak. I should think that anything that weakens the Presidency (and the Courts) is greatly to be desired. The next expansion of Presidential power would be seizure of the appropriation power, and Obama made some inroads on the fundamental Congressional power in the ACA subsidies to the insurance companies.
So let us hope Trump and all his successors become weak, and that Congress recovers it just powers.
PS. Could it not be that the apparent disarray in both Congression parties is due to their impotence?
Cogent comments, Bob Sykes.
Hmm. FDR was a strong President — he dealt with a major economic recession PLUS a world war. What other leaders in history, elected or inherited or stolen, dealt with such a mess? Truman I think qualifies as strong. Maybe not compared to Roosevelt, but he set the US up to compete with Stalin’s USSR, shoved into the Korean War to make the point, fired MacArthur to make another point, established NATO, enacted and funded the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, racially integrated the American armed forces … who of us, sixty years later, would undo a whit of that?
Eisenhower … kept things stable. For eight long years, while Europe was jumping from Conservative to Labor and back and sideways in the UK, and Fourth Republic to Fifth in France, and Belgium and Holland and England were losing empires and a lacerated rump of Germany was getting re-established as a nation, and the Chinese communists were consolidating themselves and the Russians were demonstrating their style of leadership by smashing down rebellions in East Germany and Hungary, and everything seemed to be going insane in Cuba and Latin America and Africa and …. and then there were racial disorders over all of America for the first time ever like it was fighting the Civil War all over again! I dunno if DDE was a “strong” President, but he ENDURED which is probably what the times demanded, and thanks to that so did the country.
JFK … I’ve mixed readings. Strong some ways, and maybe if he’d lasted longer, we’d have more to say. Or more to regret. LBJ … right on civil rights, outstanding even, a President to match with Washington and Lincoln and both the Roosevelts if only domestic affairs mattered. Alas …. but I’ll give you “strong.”
Nixon … wanted to be strong, presented himself as strong, convinced some of the public that he was strong. But I’m having problems looking back trying to remember real accomplishments.
Ronald Reagan broke the Soviet empire. Nobody’s done anything comparable to that since Tamerlane took over the middle east back in the 1200s. He’ll get five stars in the history books for centuries to come, even from people who hate his domestic policies.
Everybody else … placeholders I’d have to admit. Well intentioned as a rule but. I’ll give Barak Obama half a star for healthcare reform — the ACA is just too damned cumbersome and complex to have won the sort of support that Social Security did, but it was a step in the right direction. But half a star doesn’t equal “greatness.”
And now, Donald Trump. He’s going to be a very big figure in future history books, I suspect. Particularly books with titles starting off with “THE DECLINE AND FALL”.
What I wrote was “four strong presidents in the post-war period”. FDR died in April 1945. Not post-war.
Truman was definitely not a strong president. Go back and look at the history and it’s obvious. Over the last 20 years or so there’s been a reassessment of Truman but not in the direction of deciding he was a strong president.
I believe you’re confusing being a strong president with “greatness” or doing the right thing. Not the same things.
Didn’t hate Reagan’s domestic policies, but won’t give him 5 stars. The fall of the USSR had much moire to do with their own internal issues, and the American economy. Reagan gets credit for being there at the right time, and he did make some contributions, like convincing the Saudis to pump more oil. But overall, I would agree with Reagan, LBJ and FDR. Have mixed feelings about Nixon.
Steve
I am not claiming that Nixon was a great president or even a good one. Indeed, while he was president I disagreed with practically everything he did.
However, that he was a strong president seems to me hard to contest. Look at the record.
JFK, on the other hand, although venerated by many, was a weak president. Opinions differ on Clinton. I think he was a weak president but many think he was a strong one. IMO “triangulation” was a sign of weakness rather than of strength. You don’t impeach strong presidents.
I’m on the fence about Eisenhower.